William Vollmann - The Royal Family

The little one quickly put the Queen’s shoes on, and Justin tied them.

The Queen’s belly was sagging.

You’ll never be number one shotgun under me, she said. You’ll never be a shot-caller anymore.

The tall man was smiling vaguely under the long matted hair as he started taking the collar off, holding the chain, and the lady-in-waiting bowing double…

Sapphire tried to cling to her ankle. — Let go of me, said the Queen.

That’s not Justin, said John. That’s not Sapphire.

(He was right. Domino had sold the real Sapphire to Brady long ago for five hundred dollars cash. Sapphire had lasted for months. She’d been one of Brady’s star moneymakers.)

I want you to beat this bitch into oblivion, Domino was saying. Someone in the audience gasped, and she quickly said: Don’t worry, baby. It’s all virtual.

Somebody booed her. Pretending not to hear, she said to the ersatz Justin: I want you to bring her back when she has one breath left. Just one breath.

This is pathetic, John thought. This is embarrassing. This is Feminine Circus.

When he and Celia got back to San Francisco, he went straight to the Wonderbar and almost shyly asked the barmaid, whom he didn’t recognize, how business was, at which she froze in suspicion and fear, saying: We got no business here! and shouted something in Spanish, at which the solitary whore, fat, old and miniskirted, sent a hateful glance John’s way and went out. John never saw Domino again.

All Biblical citations are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, expanded edition (rev. standard), ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), although I have sometimes archaized certain passages.

BOOK I — THE REDUCTION METHOD

Bacon epigraph — Sir Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, New Atlantis (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Great Books of the Western World, vol. 30), p. 107 ( Novum Organum [1620], Book I, paragraph VI).

BOOK II–IRENE

Dostoyevsky epigraph — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Bantam, 1981 repr. of 1958 ed.; orig. Russian ed. 1869), p. 299.

Extract from Irène’s Cunt —Lous Aragon, Irène’s Cunt, trans. Alexis Lykiard (London: Velvet Books / Creation Books, 1996), p. 65.

BOOK III–VISITS AND VISITATIONS

Police manual epigraph — Wayne W. Bennett and Kären M. Hess, Criminal Investigation, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: West Publishing Co., 1991), p. 298.

“Light and darkness, life and death…” —James M. Robinson, gen. ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 3rd. rev. ed., trans. and introduced by the members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1990), p. 142 (The Gospel of Philip, II, 3, 14–20).

BOOK IV — BILLABLE HOURS

Sulfuric acid epigraph — H. Clark Metcalfe, John E. Williams, Joseph F. Castka, Modern Chemistry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 258.

BOOK V — THE MARK OF CAIN

Gnostic Scriptures epigraph — Robinson, p. 249 (Dialogue of the Savior).

Darwin on Formica (Polyerges) rufescens— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Great Books of the Western World, no. 49, 1952), p. 2125 ( Origin ).

BOOK VI–LADIES OF THE QUEEN

Psistratus and Athena epigraph — [attributed to Aristotle or one of his students] , The Athenian Constitution, trans. P.J. Rhodes (New York: Penguin, 1984), pp. 56–57.

BOOK VIII — SUNFLOWER

Romantic reaction epigraph — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , ed. & trans. Quentin Hoare and Goeffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1981), p. 296.

BOOK X — AN ESSAY ON BAIL

Bail for rape, kidnapping, etc. — Misdemeanor-Felony Bail Schedule in the Municipal Court of the City and County of San Francisco, State of California (effective date: August 15, 1997).

Extracts from and references to the California penal code— West’s California Codes, 1997 Compact Edition (Saint Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1997), p. 70 (ch. 3, sec. 207).

Memorandum from the public defender’s office re: police reports and perjury — Memo to all deputies, from Grace Suarez, Office of the Public Defender, Research Unit, dated 16 July 1991, re: McLaughlin v. Riverside # 6: Assembling the Class Action.

BOOK XI — “EASIER THAN YOU MIGHT EVER DREAM” (CONTINUED)

Witches’ curse epigraph — Pierre de Lancre (d. 1630), quoted in Kurt Seligmann, Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948), p. 180 (“The Witch”).

BOOK XIII — “BUSINESS COMES FIRST”

Midas epigraph — Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 1199 (“The Golden Touch,” in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, 1851) .

BOOK XVI — THE QUEEN OF LAS VEGAS

Gnostic Scriptures epigraph — Robinson, p. 138 ( The Gospel of Thomas, V, 5, II, 2, 114.20–25).

BOOK XVII — BUYING THEIR DREAM HOUSE

Epigraph on circumcision — Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D., The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 87.

BOOK XIX — A MEDITATION ON THE STOCK MARKET

Gnostic Scriptures epigraph — Robinson, p. 284 ( The Apocalypse of Adam, V, 5, 15–20).

BOOK XXIII — JUSTIN

Book of Mormon epigraph— The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon Upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi, trans. Joseph Smith, Jun. (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1986 corr. ed; “first English edition published in 1830”), p. 383 (Hel. 6.27).

BOOK XXV — THE TRUTH

Buddha epigraph— The Teaching of Buddha (Tokyo: Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai [Buddhist Promoting Foundation], 127th rev. ed., 1980), p. 108 (“Dharma,” ch. 2, “The Theory of Mind-only and the Real State of Things,” pt. III, “Real State of Things”).

BOOK XXX–LITTLE BABY BIRDS

Buddha epigraph— The Teaching of Buddha , p. 66 (“Buddha,” ch. 3, “The Form of Buddha and His Virtues,” pt. III, “Buddha’s Virtue”).

BOOK XXXI — FILIAL DUTIES

Bible extract on Abraham: Genesis 20.1

Bible extract on the unburied dead: Jeremiah 16.4

Buddha extract: “Things do not come and go…”— The Teaching of Buddha , p. 106 (“Dharma,” ch. 2, “The Theory of Mind-only and the Real State of Things,” pt. II, “The Theory of Mind-Only”).

Buddha extract: “… the mind that creates its surroundings…”— The Teaching of Buddha , p. 98 (loc. cit.)

BOOK XXXII — THE FALL OF CANAAN

Buddha epigraph— The Teaching of Buddha , p. 376 (“The Way of Practice,” ch. 2, “The Way of Practical Attainment,” pt. IV, “Sacred Aphorisms”).

Bible extract: “Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us?”—Jeremiah 16.10–11.

BOOK XXXIV — DAN SMOOTH

Gnostic Scriptures epigraph — Robinson, p. 342 (The Paraphrase of Shem, VII, 1, 10–15).

I want to thank the following people and institutions for their assistance in this project:

Noah Richler of BBC Radio paid for the auditions of several Tenderloin whore-queens and tall men. At the San Francisco Public Defender’s office, Ron Albers, Matt Gonzalez, Daro Inouye (who makes a cameo appearance as a friend of my entirely imaginary Henry Tyler) kindly answered many questions about bail and other legal-ethical matters. So did Al Graf and Geri Compana of Al Graf Bail Bonds in San Francisco and Roger Adair of Ace Bail Bonds in Sacramento. I would also like to thank the supervisory deputy D.A. in Sacramento, Albert Locher, for his time and trouble. Chuck Pfister in San Francisco and John Walsh and David McBride in Sacramento taught me a few fundamentals of private investigative procedure and gave me loads of local color.